Lauri Love in 2016. (credit: blackplans)

Lauri Love, a British man charged by the US Justice Department with multiple counts of hacking US military and government computer systems, has finally won a protracted battle against extradition. Today, the UK’s High Court declined to certify a motion by the Crown Prosecution Service to overturn Love’s successful February 2017 appeal of the extradition on human rights grounds, effectively ending the extradition effort permanently.

Love was originally arrested in the UK in October of 2013 after using an automated scanner to locate servers within a large range of IP addresses for SQL injection and ColdFusion vulnerabilities and then breaching vulnerable systems and installing Web shells to give him remote administrative-level access. He allegedly managed to compromise servers belonging to the US Missile Defense Agency, the US Army, the Federal Reserve, NASA, and the Environmental Protection Agency. Love’s attorneys fought the extradition on the grounds that Love—who has been diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome, severe depression, and antibiotic-resistant eczema—would not get appropriate medical attention in a US prison and would be at risk of suicide if he faced the potential 99-year prison term associated with the charges.

There was precedent for this sort of appeal, but not in the courts. In 2012, Theresa May—then Home Secretary—decided to halt the extradition of Gary McKinnon to the US to face trial for a similar hacking campaign, citing concerns that he would commit suicide in US custody. McKinnon was accused of scanning tens of thousands of US government computers for vulnerabilities and then gaining access to a total of 97 military and NASA computers, which McKinnon said he did to find evidence that the US government had obtained extraterrestrial technology. May made that decision based on input from medical experts, who determined he was likely to commit suicide if he faced life in a US prison.